Ravens

Category: spirituality

  • Who to be?

    Hyperichius said, ‘Keep praising God with hymns, and meditating continually, and so lighten the burden of the temptations that attack you. A traveller carrying a heavy burden stops from time to time to take deep breaths, and so makes the journey easier and the burden light.’

    ~The Desert Fathers

    “Come, all you who are thirsty,
        come to the waters;
    and you who have no money,
        come, buy and eat!
    Come, buy wine and milk
        without money and without cost.
    Why spend money on what is not bread,
        and your labor on what does not satisfy?
    Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
        and you will delight in the richest of fare.
    Give ear and come to me;
        listen, that you may live.
    I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
        my faithful love promised to David.
    See, I have made him a witness to the peoples,
        a ruler and commander of the peoples.
    Surely you will summon nations you know not,
        and nations you do not know will come running to you,
    because of the Lord your God,
        the Holy One of Israel,
        for he has endowed you with splendor.”

    Seek the Lord while he may be found;
        call on him while he is near.
    Let the wicked forsake their ways
        and the unrighteous their thoughts.
    Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them,
        and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
                         ~Isaiah 55:1-8

    While out on a walk into the nearby national forest, I saw a doe.  Off in the distance, a fleeting moment as it saw me about the same time and bounded higher up the hillside and behind some brush. For many that’s not exciting news.  Especially for those who live in relatively rural areas.

    Deer are common in much of the country, and yet, for me, it was exciting enough to pull out my phone and text Amy, “I saw a deer!”  In the twenty years since I’ve been a regular in these mountains, I’ve never seen a deer.

    Most of the other wildlife around, I’ve seen.  Squirrels, both gray and ground, coyotes of course, all kinds of birds, bobcats, bears (in the last couple years), even some bighorn sheep when I was camping near the peak of Mt. Baldy and San Bernardino flying squirrels, which would land on a bird feeder at my parents house in the middle of the night and not be bothered when I’d turn on the light.

    But I’ve never seen a deer up here even though I’ve seen deer in many other places and assumed deer were native to the area.  I’ve long suspected that it has to do with the really huge fires these mountains had in 2003 and in 2008, pretty much encircling the mountain communities with their devastation. Like in Bambi, the deer were driven away.

    Then, yesterday, I saw a deer, twice even. Maybe the same deer, as  I saw it once while walking up the trail and then again on my way back.

    The other day we were watching a movie as a family and I looked up out the kitchen window and saw a hummingbird at the feeder, a nice comforting sight, which encouraged me because I had forgotten to refill it, so hoped the hummers hadn’t given up on me.

    Back to watching the movie—Age of Ultron—and then saw more movement outside. Another bird at the feeder, but not a hummingbird. An acorn woodpecker?  That’s not a good fit.

    Yeah, the woodpecker could hang on the feeder and maneuver around, but the feeder was made for hummingbirds. I got a little worried about what the woodpecker would do (they’re kind of bullies around here) and yet I was curious all the same. Clearly it realized there was something good to be had but it just wasn’t the right sort of bird for that.

    It flew off finally after a few minutes, thankfully not knocking the feeder down or breaking it by trying to get through the ceramic flowers.

    That moment has stuck with me since, not so much the bother about the woodpecker but more a growing sense of how much I try to force some kind of spiritual sustenance at times, and in those seasons where I’m just really caught up in frenzies, I add frustration about not experiencing God’s peace or guidance.

    In the past I’ve felt guilt, that I’m not doing the this or the that which I know I should be doing or anger, at myself or at God, about the season of flurried demands that I am in and wishing for a setting that would allow me to recover a sense of my self and focus on those tasks that are life-giving rather than life-draining.

    I know how that woodpecker feels.

    Yet, there’s this regular invitation the Spirit offers. I can’t be a woodpecker trying to get into a hummingbird feeder, I can’t force myself into peace or orchestrate being handed the kinds of opportunities that I think I need to develop the rhythms I want.  I’ve tried doing those and will admit that even in the last couple of years as new opportunities for restoration have arisen, I still find myself striking my head against the walls and knocking at the doors that never get answered.

    Impatience, irritations, feelings of regret combined with pride-violating experiences of being overlooked in my areas of strength by the gatekeepers.  I can get locked into the pattern of “what ifs” or “it could have beens.”

    Given the length of my journey in seeking a place of calling this dispiriting retrospective clouds my whole sense of self and depresses my sense of present faithfulness in doing the work I have before me.  I hang on, not feeling able or increasingly even willing to keep at it. I wasn’t made for this and I wonder why God shut other doors only to have me stuck on a feeder I can’t feed from.

    It’s me, I know, though it took me a long time in my 20s and early 30s to finally realize this, not excusing the circumstances or justifying being mistreated at times, but coming more and more to the realization that while I can’t force opportunities, I can attend to what I say I believe by re-orienting my emotions in an attitude of praise and noticing.

    It’s not a quick turn, to say the least. A sea-going cargo ship carries tons and tons of weight, hard to stop and hard to turn once on its way.  So too my sense of self and emotional trajectory can get locked into destinations of frustration and despair, yet in the work of God I’m invited to look around and see from a different perspective, to become, to be present with myself in a new way.  The discipline of this turning isn’t itself easy, an intentional embrace of faith, from knowing what I should do and trusting that this is actually what, and who, God calls me to be.

    In the turning toward praise, in the seeking of stillness, in the letting go of those areas of frenzy and assumed identity that promise so much but leave me hanging, I begin to not only see differently but be differently.  The fruit of the Spirit begins to grow and ripen within, I am no longer the outsider to myself and the world I long for but am increasingly the person who I truly was made to be, oriented in God’s perspective because I begin by praising the God who has variously haunted and comforted me my whole life.

    I choose the Spirit rather than wanting, ever wanting, the sustenance that seems so sweet yet isn’t available to me.

    Do I trust God? I’ll admit that I struggle with this.

    Will I praise God even still?  That’s the invitation to enter into a posture of trust even with my tangled doubts and memories of being abandoned on the sides of roads and left out of relevant opportunities. If I am who I am made to be in the Spirit, living the day with faithfulness and praising God for what I see and what I am able to do, then I know that this God of life itself can bring the sweetness and fullness into this moment, into this place, into this season.

    Come what may, I can experience peace and hope and expressed love that all indeed is well.

    God is with us. Do we see and respond to this transforming reality?  Or do we want the world to create idols for us that mimic a sense of the divine in fractured patterns of insufficient meaning?

    That’s the crossroads for me today and every day.

    Life awaits. It begins with praise. Who or what shall we praise this day?

    “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
        neither are your ways my ways,”
    declares the Lord.
    “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
        so are my ways higher than your ways
        and my thoughts than your thoughts.
    As the rain and the snow
        come down from heaven,
    and do not return to it
        without watering the earth
    and making it bud and flourish,
        so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
    so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
        It will not return to me empty,
    but will accomplish what I desire
        and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
    You will go out in joy
        and be led forth in peace;
    the mountains and hills
        will burst into song before you,
    and all the trees of the field
        will clap their hands.
    Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,
        and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
    This will be for the Lord’s renown,
        for an everlasting sign,
        that will endure forever.”

    ~Isaiah 55:8-13

  • hoping rather than wanting

    Read: Psalm 25; Lamentations 3; Romans 15:1-13; Ephesians 4

    In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.”

    Know the hope.

    But what is hope?

    Hope is one of those words that is overused to the point of gutting it of real meaning.  In much common use, hope is really made equivalent to “want”.

    In this, it’s really saying “this is what we’d like to happen.”

    I hope I get that promotion.

    I hope my team wins.

    I hope those family members don’t get into one of their usual arguments over Thanksgiving.

    I hope I can get away for some vacation some time next year (these latter two may be connected hopes).

    Such anemic hopes are often the opposite of being content, the kind of content that Paul says he finds in all circumstances.

    We struggle with such hopes because they are rooted in our desires, or our variously achievable assertion of will.

    When we get what we want, we feel victorious, and that’s an addictive kind of experience. When we don’t get what we want, we linger in an identity crisis of one kind or another, and that’s an experience that cannot be sustained so has to be resolved one way or another.

    Driven to either more achievement or to resolve our sense of lack, we enter into forms of frenzy.

    When caught in this chaos, I find it hard to be content in any circumstances.  When things are going well, I look to see how much more well they can get. When things aren’t going well it is easy to fall into anxiety or distraction.

    The early monastics used the term “acedia” to describe this kind of spiritual depression, where our will and emotions are caught in a trap of disoriented yearning, and we lose sight of the calling we have been given in Christ.

    A person caught in this can be fully of busyness, always rushing around, always trying to do more and more, always wanting to hear what this person or that person thinks or is doing.  Or they can be caught in despair, no longer caring, no longer loving, no longer confident God is really at work.

    This isn’t about ‘clinical depression’ because a lot of people living within acedia can seem very full of life and optimistic. But they are oriented in their wants and their wants are driving them in constant frenzy.  Or it can look like depression, but has a culpable quality because it is embraced as being identity and objective perspective.

    Wants drive us to frenzy.

    So often we take our yearnings and turn them into temporary satisfactions, drinking sea water when we’re caught on the ocean in a life boat.

    Hope leads us to peace.

    Real hope, substantive hope, is a driving vision of the future in which we find our self satisfied in a deep sense.

    Hope isn’t just about our wants, though often our wants are folded into the bigger vision of our hope.  Hope is salvation because what we need, what we most need, is something far too many people have despaired to ever find.

    Who am I?  Who can I trust?  Am I a real person?

    The hope offered in Christ gives answers to these questions, an inviting answer of welcoming into a new community of eternally valued life.

    We don’t have to strive to prove ourselves having worth. God love us.

    We don’t have to give into the patterns of the world and the ways it says we have to establish our identity or order to find approval or acceptance.  We have value in Christ.

    We don’t have to fight or undermine others in order to show ourselves stronger, wiser, better.  We have a place at God’s table, sharing and laughing and singing with others.

    Hope is an orientation because it provides a vision that addresses all the concerns and questions in life. It gives us something beyond us to focus on, and keeps us from indulging the whims, distractions, sins that undermine our love of others.

    Eschatologies that are established in anxiety or fear always push toward dysfunctional communities because they are rooted in a perspective of the world and the flesh.  They are eschatologies of want: wanting to escape, wanting to dominate, wanting to indulge.

    An eschatology that is rooted in substantive hope offers a different path through life.

    Patience, because frenzy isn’t God’s way.

    Perseverance, because the present frustrations aren’t in control.

    Joy, because in walking with the Spirit we experience a new kind of life in every moment.

    Gentleness, because it’s not our will we’re fighting for but seeking that God’s will be done.  And God is full of grace.

    Hope is the path of keeping in step with the Spirit, the way of understanding that life is much bigger and much deeper and much livelier than the wan attempts the world celebrates.

    And because of this bigger vision of life, we grow in our capacity to love with the very love God resonates, seeking the best for others, seeking their fullness and possibility.  No longer anxious, we can also find rest, celebrating the Sabbath as a weekly expression of our deep, if sometimes disciplined, hope in God’s eternal presence.

    Is hope leading you this day? If not, what is driving your sense of self and decisions?

    Where are the areas of frustration or distraction in your life? Are you doing things to prove yourself to others (or to your own self)?  How is the hope we find in God’s Great Story helping you to navigate the crises within your community?

    Stop for a little bit right now.

    Pray for peace. Pray for rest.

    Pray that despite all indications the world throws at us, we can hope with a genuine hope that transcends all possibilities because the Spirit is at work and Christ is with us.

    Thanks be to God.

  • Hoping toward the Future

    First, a prayer:

    God, creator of heaven and earth, it is time for you to come, for our time is running out and our world is passing away.

    You gave us life in peace, one with another, and we have ruined it in mutual conflict.

    You made your creation in harmony and equilibrium. We want progress, and are destroying ourselves.

    Come Creator of all things, renew the face of the earth.

    Come, Lord Jesus, our brother on the way. You came to seek that which was lost.

    You have come to us and have found us. Take us with you on your way.

    We hope for your kingdom as we hope for peace.

    Come, Lord Jesus, come soon.

    Come, Spirit of Life, flood us with your light, interpenetrate us with your love.

    Awaken our powers through your energies and in your presence let us be wholly there.

    Come, Holy Spirit.

    God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, triune God, unite with yourself your torn and divided world, and let us all be one in you, one with your whole creation, which praises and glorifies you and in you is happy.

    Amen.

    ~Jürgen Moltmann, The Source of Life, 145

    There’s probably no topic that has a bigger gulf of study between academic discussions and church discussions than eschatology–often thought of as the study of the “end times.”  I have a lot of critiques about academic theology and I have a huge passion to see theology connect better with the church and popular discussions.

    Well, eschatology–the ‘end times’–is a topic in which I think the Church has really lost a sense of transformative focus and turned eschatology into something that I struggle seeing the fruit of the Spirit within.  If this is the work of the Spirit in bringing God’s Kingdom among us, then eschatology, maybe even most of all, should be full of love, joy, peace, patience, and the rest.

    Being awakened to a, ahem, fuller eschatology really has rejuvenated much of my own faith and hope not only for the future but also the present.

    Last Sunday, we got home late from a whirlwind trip to Santa Barbara (about a 3 hour drive). My daughter is in 4th grade and here in California 4th graders study state history and do a project on the California missions.

    This is a pretty difficult history in part because of how Christianity was used to virtually enslave the native coastal populations of Chumash, Tongva, and others.

    Yet, the continuing work of the Franciscans in Santa Barbara (the only mission with a continuing community of Franciscans since its founding) has a lot of light and hope and help in it I could see going on these days–I really like the preaching of the pastor there. But, it wasn’t constant progress from then to now.  That work also had some really dark times even as recently as the last few decades.

    What do we do with the Franciscans of the 1th century or the Franciscans involved in horrid scandals in the 20th century (which impacted, I learned later, one of my good friends in 4th and 5th grade)? Does that ruin any chance of hope? Do we abandon ourselves to rage or despair? Or do we, on the other hand, ignore the tragedy and evils of humanity?

    I don’t think so.

    Eschatology involves not a dismissiveness about the past, nor a triumphalism, but a hope that we are never wholly lost in our brokenness, that at every point we are invited to seek a better way even in this present life and be people who encourage, renew, edify each other.

    The vision God gives us of our future should bring us peace because we know we don’t have to be people who hate, who undermine others in competition or attempts at asserting our will.  We don’t have to be caught in the frenzy and never ending expectations of the world.

    We can become people who listen. Who learn, Who dance in the rhythms of the Spirit’s work, remembering the brokenness of the past in seeking a redeeming story of life together, reconciled and finally truly free.

    Where are you needing freedom this week?  What do you need freedom from? Who can you give freedom to in your efforts?

    Let us together seek a living eschatology that in bringing us hope for what is to come makes us be bringers of life and freedom to our neighborhoods and to our families.

    This isn’t our work, this is the work of the Spirit that we sing and dance with as we learn the words, the steps, and love those around us.

    It’s also really true that our trip this last weekend was a wonderful getaway after a very long season of sickness, frustrations, and other things.

    I lived in Santa Barbara for a while growing up and my family then had some really difficult experiences, that eventually caused us to leave, severe financial and health issues. But in being back with my own family, I was able to find places of peace I remembered and places of beauty to share.

    It was busy, but it was also restful. I pray you are able to find places and moments of rest, of beauty, of deep grace that helps you think of the challenging moments with a sense of God’s care and provision.

    The story God is writing continues, and let us seek God’s telling in our lives and in those around us.

  • Embracing Hope

    Read: Psalm 25; Lamentations 3; Romans 15:1-13; Ephesians 4

    In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.”

    Know the hope.

    But what is hope?

    Hope is one of those words that is overused to the point of gutting it of real meaning.  In much common use, hope is really made equivalent to “want”.

    In this, it’s really saying “this is what we’d like to happen.”

    I hope I get that promotion.

    I hope my team wins.

    I hope those family members don’t get into one of their usual arguments over Thanksgiving.

    I hope I can get away for some vacation some time next year (these latter two may be connected hopes).

    Such anemic hopes are often the opposite of being content, the kind of content that Paul says he finds in all circumstances.

    We struggle with such hopes because they are rooted in our desires, or our variously achievable assertion of will.

    When we get what we want, we feel victorious, and that’s an addictive kind of experience. When we don’t get what we want, we linger in an identity crisis of one kind or another, and that’s an experience that cannot be sustained so has to be resolved one way or another.

    Driven to either more achievement or to resolve our sense of lack, we enter into forms of frenzy.

    When caught in this chaos, I find it hard to be content in any circumstances.  When things are going well, I look to see how much more well they can get. When things aren’t going well it is easy to fall into anxiety or distraction.

    The early monastics used the term “acedia” to describe this kind of spiritual depression, where our will and emotions are caught in a trap of disoriented yearning, and we lose sight of the calling we have been given in Christ.

    A person caught in this can be fully of busyness, always rushing around, always trying to do more and more, always wanting to hear what this person or that person thinks or is doing.  Or they can be caught in despair, no longer caring, no longer loving, no longer confident God is really at work.

    This isn’t about ‘clinical depression’ because a lot of people living within acedia can seem very full of life and optimistic. But they are oriented in their wants and their wants are driving them in constant frenzy.  Or it can look like depression, but has a culpable quality because it is embraced as being identity and objective perspective.

    Wants drive us to frenzy.

    So often we take our yearnings and turn them into temporary satisfactions, drinking sea water when we’re caught on the ocean in a life boat.

    Hope leads us to peace.

    Real hope, substantive hope, is a driving vision of the future in which we find our self satisfied in a deep sense.

    Hope isn’t just about our wants, though often our wants are folded into the bigger vision of our hope.  Hope is salvation because what we need, what we most need, is something far too many people have despaired to ever find.

    Who am I?  Who can I trust?  Am I a real person?

    The hope offered in Christ gives answers to these questions, an inviting answer of welcoming into a new community of eternally valued life.

    We don’t have to strive to prove ourselves having worth. God love us.

    We don’t have to give into the patterns of the world and the ways it says we have to establish our identity or order to find approval or acceptance.  We have value in Christ.

    We don’t have to fight or undermine others in order to show ourselves stronger, wiser, better.  We have a place at God’s table, sharing and laughing and singing with others.

    Hope is an orientation because it provides a vision that addresses all the concerns and questions in life. It gives us something beyond us to focus on, and keeps us from indulging the whims, distractions, sins that undermine our love of others.

    Eschatologies that are established in anxiety or fear always push toward dysfunctional communities because they are rooted in a perspective of the world and the flesh.  They are eschatologies of want: wanting to escape, wanting to dominate, wanting to indulge.

    An eschatology that is rooted in substantive hope offers a different path through life.

    Patience, because frenzy isn’t God’s way.

    Perseverance, because the present frustrations aren’t in control.

    Joy, because in walking with the Spirit we experience a new kind of life in every moment.

    Gentleness, because it’s not our will we’re fighting for but seeking that God’s will be done.  And God is full of grace.

    Hope is the path of keeping in step with the Spirit, the way of understanding that life is much bigger and much deeper and much livelier than the wan attempts the world celebrates.

    And because of this bigger vision of life, we grow in our capacity to love with the very love God resonates, seeking the best for others, seeking their fullness and possibility.

    No longer anxious, we can also find rest, celebrating the Sabbath as a weekly expression of our deep, if sometimes disciplined, hope in God’s eternal presence.

    Is hope leading you this day? If not, what is driving your sense of self and decisions?

    Where are the areas of frustration or distraction in your life? Are you doing things to prove yourself to others (or to your own self)?  How is the hope we find in God’s Great Story helping you to navigate the crises within your community?

    Stop for a little bit right now.

    Pray for peace. Pray for rest.

    Pray that despite all indications the world throws at us, we can hope with a genuine hope that transcends all possibilities because the Spirit is at work and Christ is with us.

    Thanks be to God.

     

  • I pray, preserve me from all dangers…

    Trinity in unity, preserve me.
    Unity in Trinity, have mercy on me.

    I pray,
    preserve me from all dangers
    which overwhelm me
    like the waves of the sea,
    so that neither mortality
    nor the vanity of the world
    may sweep me away this year.

    And I also ask,
    send the high, mighty hosts of heaven,
    that they not abandon me
    to be destroyed by enemies,
    but defend me now
    with their strong shields
    and that the heavenly army
    advance before me:
    cherubim and seraphim by the thousands,
    and archangels Michael and Gabriel, likewise,
    I ask, send these living thrones,
    principalities and powers and angels,
    so that I may be strong,
    defended against the flood of strong enemies
    in the next battle.

    May Christ, whose terror scares away the foul throngs,
    make with me a strong covenant.
    God the unconquerable guardian,
    defend me on every side by your power.

    Free all my limbs,
    with your safe shield protecting each,
    so that the fallen demons cannot attack
    against my sides or pierce me with their darts.

    I pray, Lord Jesus Christ, be my sure armor.
    Cover me, therefore, O God, with your strong breastplate.

    Cover me all in all with my five senses,
    so that, from my soles to the top of the head,
    in no member, without within, may I be sick;
    that, from my body, life be not cast out
    by plague, fever, weakness, suffering,
    Until, with the gift of old age from God,
    departing from the flesh, be free from stain,
    and be able to fly to the heights,
    and, by the mercy of God, be borne in joy
    to the heavenly cool retreats of his kingdom.

    Lorica of Gildas, 9th Century

  • The Spirit’s work of diversity

    Read Isaiah 61; Acts 2; 1 Corinthians 12; 1 John 2:27

    While I was in seminary and a little while after, I was working as a young adults pastor, with added responsibilities in teaching Christian education classes. I also helped with special events, like organizing a walk-through, multimedia stations of the cross.

    I loved working with the people and helping them discover their own callings in Christ, growing in my own walk with God and understanding of my gifts and passions as the same time.  Yet, there was a lot of dysfunction in the higher leadership.

    The church had started as a very dynamic youth and single oriented congregation, becoming older and more family oriented.  Along the way, it had lost its founding pastor and his replacement had a lot of passion for God, but did not have theological education and had a lot of other personal issues.

    A new group of people surrounded him, talking about his role as a visionary leader, the one who gave vision to the church and who was anointed by God to shape the church.

    He took this to heart and began to make changes that alienated a great many long-involved participants, dismissing concerns and making sweeping changes to the ministry structure.  He burned out after a while, and other staff pastors stepped up in leadership, but the change was set.

    A highly participatory church had morphed into a staff-driven structure and passive congregation. I had vague ideas about what was happening, but couldn’t find the right words or the right path.

    I was on my way to burning out in the midst of the politics and dysfunction, so stepped away from ministry to pray, to study, to consider what God was doing in my life and my calling.

    A couple years later I realized it really was an issue of pneumatology, which is the theological term for thinking about the Holy Spirit.

    All the while at that church, there was a lot of discussion about the Holy Spirit, who gives gifts and encourages participation, but the pathways for involvement were increasingly narrowed.

    There was a passion for God, but a lack of recognition of how God works through the Holy Spirit and how to provide space for this work while maintaining a consistent unity and commitment to the mission of God in the community.

    That last statement can sum up a great deal of church history.  Almost all of our theology and church organization comes out of arguments, controversies, concerns that arise when a group of people get together to express their own sense of Christ’s revelation to us and call for us.

    People, you may have noticed, have some very different ideas about what we should do when we gather together, how we should act in society, what we should believe about who Jesus is and what he’s up to.

    It’s often much easier to set firm boundaries and rigid rules, to organize a community according to a set pattern and have clearly defined roles in this community.  Unity through conformity.

    The Holy Spirit doesn’t work through conformity, the Spirit works through diversity:  different parts, different roles, different gifts, different passions, different critiques.

    Unity in diversity is the model of the Spirit, but for this diversity to become music rather than a cacophony, a dance rather than a crowd, it’s important to understand the ways the Spirit moves in this world, for this world, in us, for us, through us.

    That was the revelation that helped me find a way back to a love for the church.  It was the topic of my first book and a continuing topic of focus for me in both study and ministry.

    How does the Spirit work? How do we bring together a group of people who have very different responses to this work and find a way of joining together in the mission of God in our contexts?  Who will save us indeed from the body of death that is expressed in alienation and division?

    That is the topic of this week, considering the work of the Holy Spirit, a very practical topic while also being one that encourages deep reflection.  How do you see the Holy Spirit working in your life? What are your gifts? How would you describe your calling?

    Think also about your blindspots, areas where you are weak or areas where you are so strong it is easy to bulldoze others.  Do you have people in your life who have very different gifts and callings?  How is the work of the Spirit expressed in your life and in your community? Is there a thriving diversity or more of a constrictive conformity?

    What is the theology of the Spirit that is being expressed? If you had to reverse engineer your community’s pneumatology, what would you get?

    The Spirit we read about in Scripture is the same Spirit working among us now, the Spirit who was with Jesus in his ministry is the Spirit working in the people who make up the Church.

    “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

    Thus, we are “to make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace,” a peace that celebrates the diversity of God’s work, a unity formed by God, which we have been invited into.

    Let us consider this unity as we ponder the many facets of the work of the Spirit.

    Let us be people who point to a fullness of life, speaking into the lives of others as we celebrated God’s work in them, shaping and learning, making space and adding creativity, dancing with others to the music of God’s eternal symphony.

    Each week in my class on the Holy Spirit, I add a more pastoral reflection to the usual theological content. This was the one for the current week 7.

  • Fruit and Feelings

    Read: 1 Kings 19:1-18; Jeremiah 20:7-18; Acts 16:11-34; Ephesians 5:15-20

    When I was in college, I experienced a roller coaster in my relationship with God.  I went to a Christian school in the Chicago area because I felt God leading me there. And God had plans for me while there but they didn’t seem to fit into the expected college experience.

    It was a place of training and training often involves breaking.  Which came. Harshly.

    Before that there was an awakening.  Moments and days in which I felt my heart and mind and whole being opening up in a new vision of God’s work, a deep awareness of God’s presence, an assurance of God’s being.

    There were moments of theophany, of discovering a deep truth behind the apparent truths, a perception of complete coherence. I didn’t have words for these experiences even as I knew they were real.

    I felt my very being stretch and expand, feeling at times both loosely connected to this world and utterly embedded, a part of God’s creation.

    Then a turn.

    Everything crumbled, the light went from on to off, the presence of God departed.  At least that’s how it felt. A turn to loneliness deepened by even the absence of God’s encouragement and hope. I felt destitute. Empty.  Prayers extending into shadows and emptiness.  Feeling lost in my faith, my being, my hope.

    Carried on by that earlier divine presence. There’s something there. I knew it. But could not see it or feel it.  All was dark.

    I refused to let go, even in the pain and frustration.  I read more, sought answers, asked for counsel.  Reading helped but only to show that my experience was not unique. It was a common experience through Scripture, throughout the stories of women and men in history.

    They were close to God and then they encountered a wide ditch of God’s absence. No way forward. No way back.

    I knew the facts about God, the story about God’s work in Scripture and history, the doctrines of faith.  But where was the life?  I missed it but knew there was something there.  I pressed on, not giving up, not running away.

    A path was there but it was surrounded by dangers and thorns and troubles.  Encouragement came in fleeting glimpses, the fifth door on the left slightly ajar. Just enough sense of joy to become bread crumbs of discovery, a persistent discouragement at every other turn to prevent me from walking down distracting roads.

    God kept me on the path, but did so by a dynamic interaction that led me through ups and downs, through college, into seminary, at churches, in the mountains, back for more study and then teaching.

    The ups and downs were not required by God, but were my experiences of being buffeted in too many directions, competing narratives and goals pulling me left and right, out and in, up and down, rather than steady in my faith and patient in the journey.

    My heart variously strangely warm and strangely cold, a roller coaster turning into a refined palate, increasingly able to attune myself in God’s grace, centering in Christ, navigating in the whispers and moves of the Spirit.

    Such dynamic experiences tend to resist intellectual analysis, resulting in those groans and utterances of tongues or music, trying to express that which is indeterminate at first, then indescribable.

    Trying to find the words leads deeper down the path. I discovered and was given words not so that I can manage God but so that I can come alongside, able to be a voice of comfort, hope, counsel, a heart transformed by the Spirit better able to participate with the Spirit in my context.

    The presence of God is indeed more than a validation for us. The Spirit calls us and is shaping the whole of our being to be renewed in light of God’s life and mission.

    Becoming attuned to this mission reaches into the deepest parts of ourselves, places we are most vulnerable and broken, places we may also be the most strong and full of meaning. Our spirit in the presence of God’s Spirit.

    What are your desires on this day? What is your mood? What are your passions and hopes and fears?  Lay these out, call them by name, seek wisdom about what is oriented in God and what needs redirection towards God. Let the Spirit comfort, let the Spirit transform.  It is not easy, often difficult, though sometimes it is wonderful.

    The promise of this journey is peace and stillness, even in troubles, hope in times of mystery, rest in times of comfort.  When our desires and emotions match the mission of God in the moment we begin to dance, no longer tossed and torn by the storms. We become effective in the moment, in the place, in the purpose.  At the end of all things, still standing (Eph. 6:13).

    Each week in my class on the Holy Spirit, I add a more pastoral reflection to the usual theological content. This was the one for the current week 4.

  • Faith and Depression

    From what I can figure, I’ve been dealing with clinical depression for about 35 years.

    I started taking an anti-depressant for the first time in mid-October.

    I’m taking an anti-depressant because of the faith I have in Christ and the hope I have in God’s work.

    I know there’s some pushback from folks about doing something like that. So here’s why I’m doing it.

    God doesn’t ask us to prove our faith by taking on additional challenges. God calls us to be free in the grace we’ve been given in Christ, to have hope in God’s promise of salvation, and to be obedient to the calling we have been given.  As Samuel told Saul, “Obedience is better than sacrifice.”

    My calling is to help empower women and men for ministry, so that in the church and well outside the church, they express the fullness of the Spirit’s work, learning to deeply and broadly resonate the work of Christ wherever they go.

    It is not my calling to prove my faith by adding then overcoming barriers that make life harder.  It is not my calling to prove my faith to others who make their relationship with Christ about competition, or evidence, or another ego-oriented comparision.

    I am taking an anti-depressant precisely because I have faith, faith enough to “throw off everything that hinders” and to run with perseverance the race marked out for me.  Inasmuch as I see depression as itself my enemy or my cause, I’m weakened for what I can and should be doing.  Inasmuch as I see the bounty of Christ in providing a way forward for me now, to invite me to embrace what I can to better do what I should, I’m taking seriously the work of the Spirit in me.

    My way is easy, my burden is light, Jesus says.  I’m not gaining any points with him by holding onto extra burdens and weights other people insist I carry.

    I’m responsible to the Spirit.  So, over the years I’ve learned that is precisely faith that calls me to be proactive in addressing my failings and brokenness as I can.

    That’s the quick version of why I’m taking an anti-depressant now. Here’s the longer version: (more…)

  • Aspiring rather than Expecting

    Among the problems of social media is the confusion between an aspirational post (“this is a good example and encouragement to me”) versus an expectational post (“You other people need to do this”) The first is helpful and a sign of seeking growth, seeing the problem of self. The second is pedantic and sees the problem as other people.

    We bring our own experiences and frustrations and challenges, and then generalize, thinking everyone is posting something for the same reasons we might post it.

    The challenge is that history is filled with both moral expectational hypocrisy and ennobling moral aspirations. Without knowing a particular person’s story, it’s hard to know which is happening.

    But that’s hard work. It’s much easier, thought significantly less transformative, to assert what we think others are doing, and why, then judge them for not living up to what we think they should do. We make it about ego-competition, and that always devolves into anger, division, frustration.

    We should make it about love.

    Which is me being aspirational. I want to social media differently than the world demands, neither giving into the dysfunction nor retreating altogether.

  • co-opted

    If our ecclesiology has been co-opted by the systems, then we cannot find liberation by revision within the systems as they are currently expressed. That perpetuates the system. It is thus important to assess the theological issues that led to such a pattern and determine if these need revision or transformation.

    ~Patrick Oden, Hope for the Oppressor (forthcoming)

    Note, that if our ecclesiology has been co-opted, so too has our theological and ministerial education.